 What's going on everybody? My name is Alex Friedberg and in today's video we're going to be talking about data analyst bootcamps. I get asked all the time whether they're worth the money, whether somebody should do it or if they'll actually get them a data analyst job. And so this video is going to cover everything you need to know about data analyst bootcamps and if they are right for you. To get started I'm going to talk a little bit about what a bootcamp is and then I'm going to go into some of the pros and cons of a data analyst bootcamp and then at the end we're going to look at two data analyst bootcamps that are both online and see kind of what you're getting for your money and how much they actually cost. So for those of you who don't want a data analyst bootcamp is it's basically a course we're going to go in-person or online and you're going to learn everything you need to know to become a data analyst and get a job as a data analyst. These can range from one week all the way up to six months and some of them are part-time and some are full-time ranging from about three hours a day all the way up to eight hours a day which is basically like a full-time job. I will note that because of COVID almost all the in-person bootcamps are online now it's basically still the same time commitment it's just online instead of in-person. When you join one of these bootcamps you're assigned a teacher or a mentor and you're also assigned into a cohort where you have other students that are working alongside you typically around five to twelve people and you're going to start with the basics and they're going to teach you everything you know to be job-ready. They're going to assign you real-world problems as well as homework and you're going to work through all these things with your cohort and so you guys can help each other and you guys can learn from each other. These bootcamps average around $5,000 in cost but they can go as low as $3,000 and as high as $15,000. A lot of these bootcamps have job assistance where they're actually going to help you with your resume and your portfolio and helping you find a job. Some actually offer a job guarantee which means if you don't get a job you don't have to pay for the tuition for the course. So in a nutshell that's basically what a data analyst bootcamp is. Let's go on to the positives of the things that I like about data analyst bootcamps and then we'll go into the negatives. One of the things I like is that you learn everything really fast and you have a coach and an expert who's going to be there to help you understand all the things that you need to know and help bounce ideas off of and help understand concepts that you're learning. There are also other students who you can work with and you get to bounce ideas off them and work on projects with them which is kind of what it's like in the real world and I like that they have real world projects that you can work on and add to your portfolio. That was one of the most difficult things for me when I was first starting out is I had no idea what a good project looked like and so having them already set up for you is really really nice and the last thing that I like is some of them offer a job guarantee which means if you pay for this course you are guaranteed a job and if you don't get a job you're going to get your money back or you don't have to pay which I think is a really really good perk of doing a bootcamp. Now let's go on to the negatives and I think the first one to mention is the price. $7,000 is not cheap and I know that I would definitely not have been able to afford that when I was first starting out and I probably would have had to take out a loan or borrow money from my parents just to pay for one of these bootcamps and while you're spending that $7,000 you're also not working because a lot of these are full-time bootcamps and so while you're spending that money you also are not gaining money because you don't have a job. So if you have a family or you already have a job it'll make it near impossible to balance that as well as the bootcamp at the same time. Now one of my positives was that some of these bootcamps have a job guarantee but one of my negatives is that the vast majority of them don't have a job guarantee only select few really do and so if you don't get a job guarantee you may be paying $7,000 for absolutely nothing and you may not get a job in the end which would be really devastating and it would definitely hurt you financially in the long run. My last negative is that these bootcamps do not replace a degree and so if you're applying for a job and their minimum requirement is a bachelor's degree and you only have a data analyst bootcamp on your resume you're probably not going to meet the minimum requirements. Really quick let's look at two online data analysts bootcamps and look at the curriculum as well as the pricing for these bootcamps. The first one that we're going to look at is this one right here which is springboard. I saw this one everywhere so let's take a look at this one and see what the curriculum actually looks like. So for this online bootcamp here is what you'll be learning. The first thing is framing structured thinking which is basically teaching you how to ask the right questions. The next section is analyzing business problems and it's basically teaching you financial and statistical problems in excel and how to solve those. The next thing is connecting data to sql and so getting this data into sql and they're actually doing that in my sql. The next section is visualizing data with python and for this they're going to use duper notebooks as well as matplotlib and seaborn for those visualizations. And last they're going to teach you how to communicate your analysis with tableau and powerbi. With all that being said they're basically just teaching you excel sql python and then powerbi or tableau. And for tuition the cost is six thousand six hundred dollars and if you pay upfront you can actually pay only five thousand five hundred dollars or you can pay monthly and pay about a thousand dollars per month. Speaking for myself I think that is pretty expensive and I know that I could not have afforded that when I was first starting out and I will say a lot of the stuff that you're learning of a basics. You're learning excel you're learning sql python tableau. These are all things that you can absolutely learn on your own. It's just that on this platform you can learn to all in one place and you learn at an accelerated rate. Here's another online bootcamp that I found that's called brain station got really good reviews. Let's look at the course work first and then we'll look at the price. So looking at this course it looks like the first thing is on data collection and then actually goes into cleaning and analyzing your data. It looks like that's all done in excel and then the next thing is databases where you actually learn sql and looks like this is also done in my sql. And the very last thing is visualizing your data and that's all done in tableau. So if you notice they don't do python and they also don't do powerbi which they did in the last day to bootcamp. And for this bootcamp the price is around three thousand dollars which is just about half of the last bootcamp that we looked at. So overall I don't think that bootcamps are worth it. I think it's too expensive and I also think a vast majority of the things that you're going to learn in these bootcamps are things that you can teach yourself online for free. I guess if you have the money and you want to become a data analyst this might be a good option for you because it probably will help you become a data analyst a little bit faster. I just don't see this as something that I would have taken when I was first starting out and so I don't think I can recommend it for you guys. Again those are just my opinion and my perspective and you may be in a completely different situation where a bootcamp is perfect for you and in that case go for it. I mean there's nothing wrong with bootcamps. I just think that the cost is too high for what you're actually getting. So that's all I got. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you want to support the channel check out my Patreon page in the description, like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.